In recent years, developments in the field of the life sciences have proceeded at a breathtaking rate. Universities, hospitals and newly formed companies have made groundbreaking scientific discoveries and advances that promise to reshape the fields of medicine, agriculture, and environmental science. However, the success of these efforts depends, in part, on the development of sophisticated laboratory tools that will automate and expedite the testing and analysis of biological samples. Only upon the development of such tools can the benefits of these recent scientific discoveries be achieved fully.
At the forefront of these efforts to develop better analytical tools is a push to expedite the analysis of complex biochemical structures. This is particularly true for human genomic DNA, which is comprised of at least about one hundred thousand genes located on twenty four chromosomes. Each gene codes for a specific protein, which fulfills a specific biochemical function within a living cell. Changes in a DNA sequence are known as mutations and can result in proteins with altered or in some cases even lost biochemical activities; this in turn can cause a genetic disease. More than 3,000 genetic diseases are currently known. In addition, growing evidence indicates that certain DNA sequences may predispose an individual to any of a number of genetic diseases, such as diabetes, arteriosclerosis, obesity, certain autoimmune diseases and cancer. Accordingly, the analysis of DNA is a difficult but worthy pursuit that promises to yield information fundamental to the treatment of many life threatening diseases.
Unfortunately, the analysis of DNA is made particularly cumbersome due to size and the fact that genomic DNA includes both coding and non-coding sequences (e.g., exons and introns). As such, traditional techniques for analyzing chemical structures, such as the manual pipeting of source material to create samples for analysis, are of little value. To address the scale of the necessary analysis, scientist have developed parallel processing protocols for DNA diagnostics.
For example, scientist have developed robotic devices that eliminate the need for manual pipeting and spotting by providing a robotic arm that carries at its proximal end a pin tool device that consists of a matrix of pin elements. The individual pins of the matrix are spaced apart from each other to allow each pin to be dipped within a well of a microtiter plate. The robotic arm dips the pins into the wells of the microtiter plate thereby wetting each of the pin elements with sample material. The robotic arm then moves the pin tool device to a position above a target surface and lowers the pin tool to the surface contacting the pins against the target to form a matrix of spots thereon. Accordingly, the pin tool expedites the production of samples by dispensing sample material in parallel.
Although this pin tool technique works well to expedite the production of sample arrays, it suffers from several drawbacks. First, during the spotting operation, the pin tool actually contacts the surface of the substrate. Given that each pin tool requires a fine point in order that a small spot size is printed onto the target, the continuous contact of the pin tool against the target surface will wear and deform the fine and delicate points of the pin tool. This leads to errors which reduce accuracy and productivity.
An alternative technique developed by scientists employs chemical attachment of sample material to the substrate surface. In one particular process, DNA is synthesized in situ on a substrate surface to produce a set of spatially distinct and diverse chemical products. Such techniques are essentially photolithographic in that they combine solid phase chemistry, photolabile protecting groups and photo activated lithography. Although these systems work well to generate arrays of sample material, they are chemically intensive, time consuming, and expensive.
It is further troubling that neither of the above techniques provide sufficient control over the volume of sample material that is dispensed onto the surface of the substrate. Consequently, error can arise from the failure of these techniques to provide sample arrays with well controlled and accurately reproduced sample volumes. In an attempt to circumvent this problem, the preparation process will often dispense generous amounts of reagent materials. Although this can ensure sufficient sample volumes, it is wasteful of sample materials, which are often expensive and of limited availability.
Even after the samples are prepared, scientist still must confront the need for sophisticated diagnostic methods to analyze the prepared samples. To this end, scientists employ several techniques for identifying materials such as DNA. For example, nucleic acid sequences can be identified by hybridization with a probe which is complementary to the sequence to be identified. Typically, the nucleic acid fragment is labeled with a sensitive reporter function that can be radioactive, fluorescent, or chemiluminescent. Although these techniques can work well, they do suffer from certain drawbacks. Radioactive labels can be hazardous and the signals they produce decay over time. Non-isotopic (e.g. fluorescent) labels suffer from a lack of sensitivity and fading of the signal when high intensity lasers are employed during the identification process. In addition, labeling is a laborious and time consuming error prone procedure.
Consequently, the process of preparing and analyzing arrays of a biochemical sample material is complex and error prone.